Spear phishing email

Spear phishing email attacks are on the rise.

A spear phishing email is a hacking threat where the sender poses as someone familiar in order to get the recipient to divulge sensitive or private information. A spear phishing email often uses social-engineering techniques to make the recipient believe the sender is a colleague or acquaintance, and then trades on that trust to ask for information like passwords, login credentials or even financial information.

In the latest version of spear phishing email attacks known as “whaling”, the sender assumes the identity of a high-level executive like the CEO or CFO of the company and instructs another employee to wire money to an account that is later determined to be fraudulent.

Despite significant training about the dangers of a phishing attack, 23% of phishing emails are still opened by employees1. These attacks lead to headline-producing breaches every year, causing millions of dollars in losses for companies around the world.